She2
by turbomagnus
Summary: AU. Lister notices a gleam in Rimmer's eye when he reaches for Kochanski's hologram disc, so he quickly switches and puts what should be Rimmer's disc in the computer...


Summary: AU. Lister notices a gleam in Rimmer's eye when he reaches for Kochanski's hologram disc, so he quickly switches and puts what should be Rimmer's disc in the computer...

Author's Note: I am well aware that in "Confidence And Paranoia", Lister had already selected the personality disc before ever entering the Projection Room. His not doing so until afterwards in this story is intentional to allow the events to take place somewhere besides the outside hull of the ship.

Disclaimer: "Red Dwarf" is the property of Grant Naylor and the BBC, used for entertainment purposes without permission or intent to profit.

-o0O0o-

"She2"  
By J.T. Magnus, 'Turbo'

-o0O0o-

A box of personality disks sat on a console in the Holographic Projection Room of the Jupiter Mining Corporation vessel _Red Dwarf,_ each disk containing the memories and personality of one of the ship's crew complement from the ship's Captain on down to the members of the Z Shift maintenance crew. Encoded upon one of those discs was everything that the ship's Tenth Generation Hologrammatic Artificial Intelligence, known as Holly, needed to create an almost exact holographic duplicate of Navigation Officer Kristine Kochanski. It was this particular disk that Third Technician Dave Lister was planning to use, despite the best efforts of the hologram of Second Technician Arnold Rimmer to prevent it from happening.

With his hand on the personality disc, Lister paused, frowning at his holographic shipmate and de facto roommate who was looking far too smug at the moment for what Lister was sure would be his - Lister's - own good. Rimmer was about to be out-ranked, out-manuveured, and out-numbered, so what reason could the mangy git have for being so smug...

'Unless...' Lister realised suddenly, 'The smeghead's up to something...'

-o0o-

 _"Lister, I have an exam tomorrow, which I intend to pass."_

 _"Yeah, I know," Lister responded, "By cheating."_

 _Rimmer held up his writing-covered arm, "This is not cheating! It's merely an aid to memory. Helps me marshal the facts already at my command."_

-o0o-

Lister's eyes narrowed as the conversation some months and three million years ago came back to him; Rimmer was an underhanded, sneaky, self-righteous goit who had no problems cheating. If he'd cheat on his Astronavigation exam, then Lister was suddenly sure he could be bloody well sure that the smeghead would try to cheat and rig something like this up to Rimmer's own advantage. Looking Rimmer dead in the eyes, Lister slowly took his hand away from the disk in Kochanski's slot and moved it further down the case, almost down to the very end, to the second to last slot, in fact... the slot for Rimmer's personality disk.

And watched as Rimmer's expression changed from elation to shock, proving to Lister that the hologram had, in fact, been up to something sneaky.

"Ho-ho, something wrong, Arn'?" Lister taunted the technically-deceased man, "After all, your disk, innit?"

"Now, come on, Listy," Rimmer replied nervously, "You'd hate having two of me around, you know that."

"But you'd love it, wouldn't you?" Lister countered, slowly pulling the personality disk out, "Unless, of course, it's not your disk in your slot..."

"Why wouldn't my disk be in my slot?" Rimmer asked defensively.

"You tell me, Rimmer." Lister held up the disk, "And you might want to talk fast, because I'm loading this disk..."

"No, don't!" Rimmer said, instinctively lunging to stop the other man and, in forgetting that he himself was now a hologram, passing right through him.

"Thank you, Rimmer," Lister said with a smirk before positioning the personality disk and sliding it into the machine. "Holly? If you would?"

"Sure thing, Dave," the hologrammatic A.I. answered in a bored tone.

A column of light descended from the ceiling, a nondescript humanoid form visible inside while orbs and specks of light swirled around it. On the hologrammatic projection control system, on the right side of a screen, another outline of a human body appeared under a heading of 'Loading Personality', to its left was a dark red vertical progress bar and a small information box. Then words appeared in the box; 'Loading pride', and the bar started filling to the top, starting over again in a slightly lighter shade of red after it had reached there. It repeated this process several times before the words changed to 'Loading prejudice' and the bar continued to fill. Time and again, the words in the box changed as the color of the progress bar moved from red to orange to yellow, finally turning green and working its way darker. When the information box read 'loading flirtatiousness', the progress bar finally finished and flashed red. 'Loading Flirtatiousness' changed to 'loading form' and the column of light grew brighter, momentarily reaching the blinding point, before fading back down to reveal the general human shape was now quite distinctly the form of Navigation Officer Kristine Kochanski. As Kochanski's form stood there inert, the information box changed to 'loading memory'; then Kochanski took a deep breath out of instinct more than necessity as holograms had no need - or ability - to breath and her head jerked back and forth as she looked around, trying to figure out what was happening.

"Dave? What's going on? Why are we in the Projection Room?" Krissie's hand went to her forehead, "Why am I a hologram?"

"In that order... yes; long story, tell you later; just loaded your disc; and... well..."

"It's been three million years since Arnold failed to seal a drive plate properly, causing a massive dose of radiation to kill everyone on board the ship except Dave who was in stasis at the time and his cat who was in the cargo hold," Holly interjected, "Simple enough, innit?"

Krissie looked around the room in a mixture of shock and horror, stopping at the monitors that were displaying Holly's image, "I'm... dead?"

"You were on board the ship, yes," Holly answered.

Krissie stared at Holly's image on the screen for a moment as she tried to process that information, finally deciding to focus on a piece at a time, starting at the beginning, the beginning that was Second Technician Arnold Judas Rimmer failing to do his job properly and getting everyone on the ship - including herself - killed.

With measured steps, Krissie walked over to where Rimmer was standing, silently cursing the failure of his attempt to trick Lister. When she got there, she calmly looked at the ceiling while she addressed the ship's A.I., "Holograms can interact with other holograms, right, Holly?"

"That's right, Krissie."

"Just wanted to be sure," Krissie nodded before drawing back her fist and punching Rimmer, knocking him to the floor, "That's for getting me killed."

Drawing back a foot, she then kicked the other hologram in the ribcage, "And that's for getting everyone else killed."

Krissie paused and looked over at Lister, "Three million years, you said?"

Lister nodded, "Oh, yeah, three million years and every day of it heading deeper into space. With an attempt at light speed we made last year, we're probably only about two million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five years away from Earth and all."

The next blow that Rimmer felt would have broken the bones in his hand, had he still been alive and human, when she stomped on it, "That's for causing Dave to spend so long in stasis."

It was nothing compared to what came next, though.

"And this is just because I feel like it," Krissie informed Rimmer just before swinging her foot again and firmly connecting with her target.

With holographic tears running down his holographic face, completely unable to form a sound much less form words, Rimmer curled up in a fetal position on the floor.

-o0O0o-

Author's Note: I know I could have continued the story into "Me2" proper, maybe even rewrote the series, but honestly? I like Red Dwarf, Dave's antics trying to find ways to get back with Kochanski are a massive part of the show and while attempts to bring holo-Krissie back to life would be amusing, ultimately it wouldn't be as amusing as the actual show. So with Rimmer's plan backfiring, him getting punished, and Dave getting at least A version of Krissie back, here's a good place to stop, I think...


End file.
